“Whatever you do, don’t
touch them!”The Doctor’s voice echoed
through the high stone archways of the cathedral crypt. Liz, hurrying to keep
up with him as he strode forward, caught sight of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart up
ahead, standing beside an ornate tomb which had a long wooden ladder propped
incongruously against it. Three bodies were tangled on the floor at his feet
and, as the Doctor spoke, the Brigadier raised his head and tucked his swagger-stick
under his left arm. “Thank you, Doctor, I had managed to work that one out for
myself.” He quirked an eyebrow in Liz’s direction. “I sent for you an hour
ago.”While the Doctor bent to
examine the bodies more closely, she answered the unspoken question: “The
Doctor insisted on taking a short-cut.” Except, of course, it had turned out to
be the exact opposite.“Ah.” A brief nod from the
Brigadier indicated that he understood what she meant, and he moved back a pace
to begin briefing them, pointing his swagger-stick as he spoke. “The chap at
the bottom is a maintenance man, Sid Reeves. The crypt’s being opened to the
public in the Spring and the chapter wanted the tombs cleaned up – get the
cherubs scrubbed, take the mould off the carvings, that sort of thing. The
curate and the deacon came by just after lunch to check on progress, found Reeves
on the floor. The curate rushed over to try to help, and he collapsed too. The
deacon phoned the police–““Which explains the
constable,” said Liz, pointing at the third body.The Brigadier looked annoyed
to have been interrupted, but said simply, “Quite. When he died too, the local
constabulary contacted the army, who contacted us. So… any ideas, Doctor?”“Hmm. Perhaps…” The Doctor
stood up, and rested a hand on Liz’s shoulder. “Take a look at them, Liz – but do
be careful!”Liz opened her mouth to
retort that she didn’t need to be told to take care, but the Doctor had already
turned his attention to the ladder the maintenance man had used. He gave it an
experimental shake, put a foot on the bottom rung and said, “Hold this steady
for me, would you, Brigadier?” The Brigadier’s immediate
reaction mirrored Liz’s own, but after a moment he sighed, rolled his eyes and
braced a hand and foot on the ladder while the Doctor began to climb. Liz gave
him a rueful smile – the Doctor had as little respect for rank as he had for
earthly qualifications. Less, probably. No sense measuring his rudeness by
human standards – especially when there were more important things to deal with.Taking care not to touch the
bodies at her feet, Liz crouched on the worn flagstones to examine them more
closely. All the men had their mouths open as though trying to suck in air – or
scream perhaps. Her initial diagnosis would have been that they’d all choked to
death – except for the strange film of what appeared to be fungus on their
hands and faces. “That’s odd.”She had spoken softly, but
the Doctor’s voice replied from ten feet above her head. “Yes, isn’t it? Did
you notice the smell?”She had. A peculiar, oily
aroma that spoke of rot and putrefaction. Not something she wanted to get too
close to anyway.“What’s odd?” The Brigadier,
still diligently holding on to the ladder, leaned a little to one side to try
to see what Liz was talking about – then jerked his hand away from the rungs in
a hurry as the Doctor descended without any warning. “Look here,” said Liz. She
took care that her pointing finger was a good foot or so away from the fungus
she’d seen. “These men have only been dead a few hours. But they’re…” She
grimaced. “Well, they look as though they’re going mouldy.”“It’s not mould.” The Doctor
proffered a hand to help her to her feet, then turned to the Brigadier. “They’re
spores - an alien lifeform known as the Dank. They float through space in tiny
clumps, driven by solar winds and gravitational currents – it can take them
millions of years to move from one planet to another. But when they do land
somewhere, they promptly start multiplying – just as they have here.” He
pointed up at the tomb and circled a finger in the air. “They’re all over the
top of the tomb. They’ll likely be clustered at the top of the vault overhead
too, and you’ll need to check whatever’s immediately above.”“The Cloisters,” said the
Brigadier, “I’ll get someone on that right away.”“Yes, well tell them not to
touch,” said the Doctor. “The Dank multiply faster when they encounter
something warm – that’s why these poor fellows died so quickly.”“How far are they likely to
spread?” asked Liz.The Brigadier nodded. “And more
importantly – how do we get rid of them?”“Ah, well. Therein lies your
problem,” said the Doctor, rubbing his chin as he often did when pondering a
tricky question, “This isn’t something you can shoot at, Brigadier, and blowing
them up will only distribute them further and exacerbate their growth. As for
how far they can spread – well, if they’re left to their own devices they’ll
eventually cover the entire planet.”“What!?” Liz stared up at
the small brown patch on one of the tomb’s carved bosses, then looked down at
the three dead men. To her horror, she could see that the spores on the bodies
had already spread from their hands and faces to their clothes, and she took an
involuntary step back. “You mean the Dank will consume everything?”The Doctor nodded. “And
everyone. It will take them a long time – hundreds of years, thousands perhaps.
But eventually, yes Liz, they will literally eat the entire earth. Then they’ll
split into millions of small colonies and float off into space to find more
worlds.”“Well, we can’t allow that
to happen.” The Brigadier put his hands behind his back and rocked on his
heels. “What’s the answer, Doctor – disinfectant?”There was a dry edge to his
voice that made Liz think his suggestion wasn’t entirely serious, but the Doctor’s
acerbic response was: “Really, Lethbridge-Stewart, must you always leap
immediately to wondering how to wipe things out?” “You’ve just indicated,
Doctor, that these Dank creatures are going to eat my planet,” the Brigadier
retorted. “It’s my job to make sure they don’t – and it’s your job, Doctor, to
advise me on the best way to achieve that. If you have any ideas that don’t
involve killing the damn things, now’s the time.”“Alright, alright. Give me a
moment to think.” The Doctor waved a dismissive hand and began to pace about,
scratching his head and rubbing the back of his neck in gestures that told Liz
he was deep in thought. The Brigadier summoned a UNIT corporal Liz hadn’t
noticed from one of the crypt’s shadowed recesses, and sent him off with orders
to check the Cloisters for spores. Liz looked up at the tomb, and the alien
fungus attacking it, and shivered. It suddenly felt very cold under those
ancient carved stones, and she folded her arms in a futile attempt to warm up.
Did she imagine it, or was that nasty smell of decay just a little stronger
now?“If I could only get my
TARDIS operational,” the Doctor murmured to himself, “I could...” He spun on
his heel suddenly, snapping his fingers as he turned to face the Brigadier. “Of
course! You need to get on to Professor Cornish at once – see if they have any
rockets scheduled for lift-off in the next month or so!”Liz thought back to their
recent adventures at the British Space Centre, and wondered how the Doctor
thought they might be able to help this time.The Brigadier looked as
confused as she felt. “I don’t see how–“The Doctor stood in front of
the tomb and spread his arms. “Take the top off the tomb,” he said, “Find the
Dank colony outside and check how far they’ve spread through the vault up
there. Cut around them – remove everything for, oh, about two feet away from
where they’ve spread. Wrap it all in plastic – it’s not a natural substance so
it will take them a while to chew through it – and launch the lot into space.”
He looked down at the bodies that had brought UNIT to the scene, and added,
sadly, “These poor chaps will have to go too, I’m afraid. And the flagstones
they’re lying on.”“But where are we sending
them?”Liz had caught up with the
Doctor’s reasoning, and smiled as she answered the Brigadier’s question: “It
doesn’t matter! Right, Doctor? Just so long as the rocket is sent into deep
space, it doesn’t matter which direction.”The Doctor beamed at her, a
teacher pleased with a star pupil. “Exactly. The Dank will feed on the soil and
stone and plastic for a while, then they’ll begin to eat through the metal of
the rocket casing. After that, they’ll be free to float through space again –
but they’ll be heading away from earth.” “Right.” The Brigadier
rested his swagger-stick on his shoulder as he looked up at the vaulted
ceiling. “So it’s just a matter of digging up the Cloisters’ manicured lawn,
wrecking part of an historic twelfth-century crypt and dismantling an important
fifteenth-century tomb.” He sighed. “I’d better go and speak to the Dean.”***EpilogueThe Space Centre’s polished
floor vibrated as the countdown reached ‘zero’ and the rocket’s engines
ignited. As it lifted off the launch pad, its planet-eating cargo stowed behind
the nose-cone, Liz sighed with relief. “Do you really think we got them all?”“As sure as I can be, Miss
Shaw.” From where they stood, at the edge of the media platform, the Brigadier
looked across the room to the communications console, where the Doctor was monitoring
the launch. “The Doctor wouldn’t agree, but from where I stand, Earth is a big
place, and I can’t guarantee that every square yard has been searched. What I
can promise is that if we find any more of those things, we’ll get them
off-planet as quickly as we can.”The picture on the giant
screen in front of them showed the glow of the rocket’s exhaust as it hurtled
into the stratosphere, and the Doctor gave a nod to the communications
technician and strolled across to join Liz and the Brigadier. “Well, that’s
that. The Dank are en route for Andromeda and they have a food supply to keep
them going till they reach deep space, then they’ll revert to their dormant
state.”“And none of them will drift
back this way?” “It’s highly unlikely,
Brigadier. If they do, they won’t get here for centuries, so it won’t be your
problem. But once I get my TARDIS up and running I’ll be able to check in on
the place for you every now and then. Which reminds me… this Inferno Project you’ve
been asked to provide security for - do you think you might prevail upon the
authorities to let me tap into their nuclear reactor to power up my TARDIS
console? With a little assistance from Liz here, I’m sure I can get the old girl
up and running in no time.”